1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to printing an image stored in a memory card, and more particularly, to a method and apparatus for printing an image stored in a memory card using a personal computer and a monitor connected to the personal computer.
2. Description of the Related Art
Hereinafter, a multi-function peripheral (MFP) or a digital photo printer (DPP) having a memory card interface section is referred to as an image printing apparatus. The following description concerns an image printing method performed by a conventional image printing apparatus.
A conventional image printing apparatus, which can read and print data stored in a memory card, operates as follows to print image data desired by a user from among a plurality of image data stored in the memory card. When a conventional image printing apparatus includes a thin film transistor (TFT)-liquid crystal display (LCD), a user scrolls through images stored in a memory card until a desired image is displayed on the TFT-LCD and then prints the desired image when it is displayed, by operating keys. Here, the keys are provided in a user interface section of the image printing apparatus. According to such a conventional image printing method, an expensive TFT-LCD is required to print a desired image stored in a memory card.
When a conventional image printing apparatus does not include a TFT-LCD and is connected to a personal computer, a user starts a special application program installed in the personal computer and operates a mouse or a keyboard of the personal computer, instead of operating the keys of the user interface section of the image printing apparatus, to scroll through images displayed on a monitor connected to the personal computer to find a desired image from among images stored in a memory card and to print the desired displayed image. Here, after reading image information corresponding to the image displayed on the monitor from the memory card, the image printing apparatus converts the image information into a Cyan-Magenta -Yellow-Black (CMYK) format using a data converter, and outputs data having the CMYK format to an image printing engine of the image printing apparatus, thereby printing the image displayed on the monitor. Accordingly, such a conventional image printing method is somewhat inconvenient because the user has to interface with the special application program executing on the personal computer. In addition, when original image data is read from the memory card, an image, which is not a thumbnail image, is displayed on a full screen of the monitor. In this case, other activities of the user or another user using the personal computer are disturbed.